Homes of Lasting Character. Since sometime in the last century.
1993, to be exact. The bubble had burst and the industry was in a deep recession. Naturally, this struck Craig Marshall as a pretty good time to open a building company, and so he launched TallTrees, a selection of very luxurious homes on the edge of the Rouge Valley Conservation lands. Tall Trees remains one of the most desirable addresses in Pickering today.
Thus began a most interesting career as a builder of beautiful homes in special locations, often adjacent to sensitive areas of natural beauty and wildlife habitat where a builders respect for the environment shows up in how and what he builds.
After the success of Tall Trees, further up the edge of the Valley, (and somewhat lower on the price scale) they went on to build Woodview Park with a sensitivity to the environment that Marshall Homes is still known for eighteen years later. You probably won’t have time to go look at everything they’ve built, but drop down to the foot of Liverpool Road and check out Frenchman’s Bay Village, then swing by Fairport on your way to Riverside and you’ll get a fair cross section of what Marshall Homes is all about.
If you really feel like a drive go on up to Bobcaygeon and look at Ontario’s nicest adult lifestyle community, Port 32, on the shore of Pigeon Lake. These are all R-2000 homes on big lots where the terrain makes it possible to save the trees and use the natural rock for landsacped terracing. You may decide not to come back.
Marshall Homes Oshawa project, Copperfield, was full of other firsts, like the first production subdivision home heated, cooled and hot watered by a solar geothermal system. It’s also the site of their first LEED home, and their first grey water recycling system, their first solar hot water systems, and their first cement-free green driveway..
Another project in Oshawa, Kingsfield, is where Craig Marshall took a stand and built a home entirely from Ontario-sourced wood and wood products. He demonstrated that it costs no more to buy local when you build, and that a lot of jobs could be kept alive in Ontario if other builders would join in the effort. By now you should see that Marshall is not just another builder of pretty homes. These are homes built to a higher standard, Homes of Lasting Character – you could say it took a lasting character to build them.